The History of Danish Dreams: A Novel

by Høeg, Peter

  It seems likely that Maria grew up in the courtyard, which makes the brutal streak in her character that we have glimpsed easier to understand, and not just that but certain subsequent occurrences. It requires some effort on our part to understand the group of children around Maria; understanding does not just happen. Part of the truth about this league of degenerate children is possibly their solidarity, and it was this that Maria was to remember. It is depicted in many a children’s book: the poor children plotting against the adults and coming out on top, high jinks on the ramparts around Christianshavn, and the fantastic, avenging forays into other neighborhoods. And this dream, even if it is romantic, may well be accurate. But there is also another truth, and that is the truth about flight: if we look at the life of the adults in the tenement in Christianshavn we can see that it is a journey—in many different directions, but at any rate a journey. But to the children it is flight. When I read the police reports I can see that they all deal with attempted getaways. Take, for example, the case of Maria’s lieutenant. One winter’s day, this boy ran away from the magistrate’s court. He ran and ran, all through the night; he contracted gangrene in both feet and had to have both his legs amputated. From then on, he hops through subsequent reports on crutches and is, because of his disability, constantly being discovered and caught. Or what about all the others who run away from prison or from reform schools or hospitals; who employ all their ingenuity in trying to get away from, or eluding, or wriggling free of people who are going to catch them anyway, all of them without exception, sooner or later.

  There is a photograph of all these children, taken early one morning. They are standing behind a shed. There is a grayish cast to the light and most of them are wearing dark clothing. Who took the photograph is a mystery, but it has been taken from an awkward angle, possibly from an outhouse roof. There is a somewhat matter-of-fact air about it, this picture, coolly registering its interest. Several of the children are carrying books and lunch bags, and they have gathered behind this outhouse so their parents will think they have gone to school. In the picture, their faces are white, very white. There is no mistaking that they are undernourished and malnourished, and it is quite evident that they are on the move. You can tell by the positioning of their feet and their arms that this group of children is about to make a move. But they are not setting out to conquer the world, they are heading away from a blow or a grasping hand, and this, too, can be sensed in the picture. They are under a strain, this group; a strain imposed, not just by God’s Avenging Finger or the Long Arm of the Law or the Firm Hand of School, but the strain of a child’s life in the Copenhagen of the 1920s. Even now, today, I find this photograph oppressive, and it makes me wish I could interpret its message. But it’s no use. Every time I open my mouth, up pops sentimentality, like a historic lump in my throat. So far better to let their time do the talking: not long after this picture was taken, Maria (if indeed it was she) was brought before the Children’s Panel because, even for those days, hers was a very representative and instructive case, and because the child-loving members of the panel were, quite simply, curious and wanted a look at the Stutterer. On that occasion, the doctor in attendance, Dr. Dambmann, said these children, this army of wretches, responded to a natural law, more specifically Boyle’s law, which says that pressure times volume equals a constant. In other words, in response to the pressure from the world around them, these children had built up a considerable and tough resistance and … er … um … an exceptional inner pressure. This sentence, uttered by a scientifically educated children’s friend, is in many ways interesting. It assumes that society and man form a kind of pressure chamber and, moreover, that they respond to natural laws—an academic dream worth noting, among other reasons because it may, to some extent, be correct. The flock of children in the picture radiates toughness as well as the inherent discipline required in order to live, the latter quality being upheld by their leaders, of whom Maria is one. She is standing at the edge of the picture; on her head she has a police helmet that hides her fair hair. Pretty brazen, isn’t it, making a getaway with a police helmet on your head? It says something about how malevolent this group was and maybe also something about a foolhardiness that is not without humor, not without an embittered grin.

  That photograph is lying in front of me, and next to it lie my blank sheets of paper. It is as though the children had already moved on; as though the whole group had disappeared, leaving a gap between a winter’s morning in Copenhagen and that March day when Maria was arrested and taken to the Copenhagen authorities, to be brought before the Children’s Panel. I am abandoning all thought of filling in that gap with anything other than the facts gleaned from the police reports: that the infringements of the penal code perpetrated by these children amounted to fifty cases of theft (including the handling of stolen goods), five cases of indecency, ten cases of unnatural practices, forty cases of assault and battery, sixty-eight cases of wanton destruction of property, forty-two cases of trafficking in minors, eleven cases of breach of the peace, and fifty-two cases that were not proven, or of which the police had not been able to make head or tail. We do not know what Maria had done; strictly speaking, we do not know whether she had done anything at all. Only one—I repeat, one—report does more than just mention the Stutterer in passing. And although it makes more detailed reference to her, it is rather muddled and falls into the “not proven” category. Otherwise only rumors and suspicions exist about this little girl with the faint stammer and her hair hidden under a police helmet.

  Maria was arrested in March, on the same day that Kofoed, the sexton who was later to become so renowned, opened his handicrafts school in Christianshavn. The report states that the arrest took place in the cellars of the tenement where she lived. It might be thought odd that the police were able to make an arrest within no-man’s-land but if it happened at all it seems only reasonable that it should have happened in the cellars. Naturally, Maria went where no one else would go. She knew these seething shafts, the lower regions of which were now filled with pale mud, and she, and possibly the other children, knew that one day all of it was going to go under. They caught her in the cellars and brought her to the police station, where they took away the police helmet that had betrayed her identity as the Stutterer. The next day they brought her to the municipal authorities. No explanation is given for why the meeting should have taken place there, in the shadow of the town hall. Which is strange, since the Children’s Panel was so skeptical of municipal bureaucracy, which is then, as now, opposed to everything, almost everything, at any rate if it involves change. It may be that the meeting was called at the last minute because they believed they had caught a ringleader, a trailblazer, a particularly hardened specimen, and so there was nowhere else for them to meet but here, in this large, high-ceilinged chamber, in the center of which Maria—if indeed it was she—now stands, lit by the March sunshine falling through the window. Around her sit the members of the Children’s Panel: Mayor Drechsel; Mr. Bayer, the lawyer; the industrialist and wholesaler P. Carl Petersen; the merchant Martin Hansen; Dr. Dambmann—shortly to mention Boyle’s law; the headmaster Knud Christensen; the Reverend C. Wagner; and Mrs. M. Hauerbach, housewife. These are joined by a senior municipal clerk, a man whose name is not mentioned in the minutes and who remained silent throughout the proceedings. They all stare at the girl before them. She is standing in the sunlight but seems to be lit from within. Her hair is long and fair, her eyes are breathtakingly blue, and she looks very, very young. This much they all see, all nine adults. But—her hair and her age apart—they each saw their own vision. A few of them scribbled their impressions in the margins of their notepads and so we know that the Reverend Mr. Wagner felt that he was face-to-face with a feminine version of the boy Jesus in the temple; and that P. Carl Petersen, the wholesaler, found himself thinking of his masseuse’s daughter; and that the headmaster thought of the Little Match Girl and the housewife of certain broadside ballads; and the only thing that
all these associations have in common is the impression that Maria is innocent. During those first few minutes, when Maria simply stood before them, with no one saying a word, the meeting’s outcome was settled. During those minutes the Children’s Panel members felt as though they understood that of course they were not confronted here by a criminal but by a Little Red Ridinghood of sorts, or a lost lamb. To me the situation seems symbolic. Looked at from a particular angle, it presents us with the most significant feature of the nature of the Child Welfare Services in 1920s Denmark. At this moment, in this chamber in the municipal buildings, all these people have different objects in mind: financial, political, erotic, religious, and charitable, most definitely charitable. But a great gap exists between them and the girl standing before them, a kind of chasm, and it is this they are attempting to bridge with the aid of the term “innocent.”

  After that it was just a matter of form. They asked a number of questions that Maria answered in monosyllables: no, she did not understand why she had been arrested; yes, she did know her parents; yes, she ate every day; yes, she was washed at least once a week; yes, she went to school. The minutes of the examination make strange reading. They did not ask Maria her name, nor did they ask her parents’ names or which school she attended—or at any rate, if they have asked, then they have not made a note of her replies. This can perhaps be explained by the impression Maria has made; the paralysis that spread throughout the chamber when they realized they were faced, not with the Stutterer, but with a creature who spoke directly to their hearts, because that is what Maria did. The amazing thing is that the Children’s Panel had not understood her—“innocence” is not a good description of a child—but Maria had understood them. With singular adroitness she has grasped the nature of these people; has penetrated it and given them exactly what they had always dreamed of: Little Red Ridinghood without the wolf, Gretel without Hansel, the dream of the Innocent Child.

  This situation is somehow familiar. The air was filled with the same emotion as when Anna testified for the brethren, at some seaside spot, and when Adonis, traveling through Jutland, had sung to the farmers: a mysterious combination of honesty and calculation and naïveté and insight—all of which, when put together, produce a wistful sigh, a sigh on the brink of tears, a sigh which, on that day, hung vibrating under the lofty ceilings of the Copenhagen municipal offices.

  Thereafter, several members of the Children’s Panel made speeches. Now, this was not standard practice, but there was something remarkable about this situation, and it must have been this that called for the speechmaking, during which the housewife, Mrs. Hauerbach, deplored this wrongful arrest and regretted that Maria was not her daughter, and P. Carl Petersen announced that he would bequeath his sizable property at 263 Strand Drive to young people with no home of their own, and Dambmann spoke of Boyle’s law—and which was rounded off by the headmaster. His speech is important because it deals with the correct sort of education on sexual matters. Now what, you may ask yourself, does that have to do with Maria? Why is sex suddenly being brought into the picture? And the answer, possibly, is that it has always been there; that when they found Maria innocent—and other children before and after her—it has something to do with the Children’s Panel’s attitude to sex, as now defined by the headmaster. With regard to sex education, he said that “this ought to be provided by the parents—though they may perhaps not be up to the task; the schools avoid the subject, and so nothing is done. I bring this up,” said the headmaster, “because it is most important that guidance given at this stage should be combined with a moral inducement, an appeal to the individual not to jump the gun but to wait until both mind and body are fully developed and mature enough to sustain a lasting marital relationship. Young people should not be instructed by the publications on such subjects sold at newsstands and tobacconists. I am not suggesting that the members of the Children’s Panel should impart such instruction personally, but the Children’s Panel ought, if possible, to ensure that it is given, in whatever way can best be arranged and in the appropriate surroundings.”

  And here his speech ended. In order to understand it, it has to be seen not only in the March sunlight that gilds Maria while the headmaster is speaking but also in the light of Maria’s own experience of sex in the building in Christianshavn, where she led the way in the basement undressing games; and where she came and went as she pleased in the whores’ quarters; and where at home she had witnessed her father and mother’s uninhibited lovemaking. Most of all, however, we ought to note that the headmaster speaks of restraining oneself and not jumping the gun and waiting until body and mind are ready and willing, and that must have sounded a bit odd to Maria, this advice to take it easy, very easy, and not to make demands, but to bide your time until blah, blah, blah … It does not have quite the same ring to it for the headmaster as it does for Maria, who hails from a place where a lot of people, if not most people, find it hard just to get enough to eat and where everyone learns from infancy to grab all he can.

  With this in mind (and not just this), Maria listens to the headmaster’s speech. Then she goes home, leaving behind her the Children’s Panel, of whose members it can be said that, in this case, they had not understood a thing. Of course, there had, both before and after this, been other meetings that were different—also meetings about Maria—and, of course, on other occasions they understood a lot more. But on this afternoon in March, in Copenhagen, in the late 1920s, they understood practically nothing.